Bunje ready for jump

Tottenham Hotspur (Spurs) Football Club is located in North London. The club is also known as Spurs. Tottenham's home ground is White Hart Lane. The club motto is Audere est Facere (To dare is to do).

Goran Bunjevcevic is back in training and hopes his return is a case of third time lucky.

What looked like being a promising season for the elegant centre-half has ended up being punctuated by injury setbacks.

He picked up a fractured jaw against Chelsea in September, returned against Fulham in the Worthington Cup fourth round, but then suffered a thigh strain while preparing for the next round against Bolton.

He recovered enough to return for the reserves only to find himself suffering from tendonitis in his knees. Now Goran, with evident relief in his voice, confirms that his injury woes are behind him.

"It's very good," he smiled. "I trained with the team on Monday morning and it's very good to be back with the boys.

"I feel very good at the moment and I hope to be in the squad for the next game and then, if everything goes okay, play for the reserves. We will see how the situation is going but I feel very good.

"I had problems with both of my knees after the last reserve game I played against Southampton. I got a problem and came off at half-time.

"They said take six or seven weeks rest and then start again as it was tendonitis or something like that."

Goran was 100 per cent positive after the freak collision with Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink that fractured his jaw - even returning for the reserves wearing a mask. But a further two absences must have been mighty frustrating for the Yugoslav.

"Yes. Sometimes it happens in football. The first one you could say it's a football injury, then I pulled my thigh in preparation for the next game and then problems with my knees.

"I have had really good help though from the gaffer and the boys and now it's okay."

Despite his time in the treatment room this season, Goran is a player with no injury track record to speak of at all.

"Yes it's true!" he laughs. "It's true! But, like I say, football - it's incredible. One year it could be good, the next it could be bad with injuries, but I've never really been injured before.

"I played lots and lots of games for my former team and the national side. I played all the games in pre-season, started the first five games in the Premiership and then got the injury that put me out for eight weeks.

"It was my first big injury, but I worked very hard and came back and got another and I was frustrated. Then this injury came when nobody expected it, but now I can come back from this and I feel very, very good."